What's new

May 2011

Brainstorm reference paper

Publication of a special issue of the journal Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience: "Academic Software Applications for Electromagnetic Brain Mapping Using MEG and EEG". The article describing Brainstorm will now be used as the its reference paper, please cite it in your publications (see How to cite Brainstorm).

Tadel F, Baillet S, Mosher JC, Pantazis D, Leahy RM, “Brainstorm: A User-Friendly Application for MEG/EEG Analysis,” Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience, vol. 2011, Article ID 879716, 13 pages, 2011. doi:10.1155/2011/879716 [ html, pdf ]

Database explorer

The file manager has been extended to support drag'n'drop and copy-paste operations. You can now move or copy easily the files from a condition or subject to another with the mouse, or using the keyboard shortcuts CTRL+C (copy), CTRL+X (cut) and CTRL+V (paste), or the File section in the popup menu.See tutorial: ?First steps.

Warping default anatomy

It is now possible to create pseudo-individual anatomies for the subjects for which you do not have any anatomical MRI. This operation is possible only if you have acquired some head points using a tracking system (eg. Polhemus Isotrak). The default anatomy (MNI/Colin27) is transformed to match those match those head points. See tutorial: Warping default anatomy.

Refine registration using head points

When importing MEG recordings, the registration between the sensors and the anatomy was based until now only on three points (nasion, left ear, right ear). This registration can be very imprecise in some cases. If you have digitized many head points with a tracking system before the recordings acquisition, the registration can be refined by trying to minimize the distance between the scalp surface and those digitized head points. This operation will be performed automatically for new datasets, but can also be called manually: right-click on channel file > MRI registration > Refine registration using head points. See tutorial: ?Refine registration using head points.

April 2011

Source estimation for the full brain volume

The head models computed with Brainstorm were until now limited to the cortex surface. This choice was following the assumption that most of the magnetic and electric activity that we record outside of the head comes from the cortex. It was a serious limitiation for users who wanted to study some deeper regions and use their own source spaces. To extend the range of analysis possible with Brainstorm, we have added the possibility to construct dipole grids that sample the full brain volume, and the appropriate visualization tools. See tutorial: Volume source estimation.